Okay. I want to welcome everybody for coming out today. It is great to see everybody in person again. We've got a really good crowd today, and I just wanna, you know, acknowledge that I know that Friday is probably not the busiest day downtown, so I wanna appreciate, you know, appreciate the fact that a lot of you came down for this. We picked a pretty cold day to drag you guys all out to come downtown. I'm gonna give you a bit of an overview, corporately, what's going on with Northland, what our growth pipeline looks like. Wendy Franks, who's our Chief Strategy Officer, is gonna talk about some new initiatives and how we're getting traction on two new growth areas.
Pauline Alimchandani, our CFO, who you all know well, is going to talk to Northland's financial picture and also take you through our current funding plan as well. We'll do questions at the end. If you look at Northland's growth trajectory, it really does track according to the energy transition in a lot of ways. In just eight years, we've gone from getting a majority of our cash flow from gas-fired generation back in 2015 to today, where we get the vast majority of our cash flow from renewables. Through this period, our market cap has tripled from CAD 3 billion to CAD 9 billion, and our installed capacity over this eight-year period has tripled as well to 3 GW. It's forecast by 2030, based on our growth pipeline, to quadruple to 12 GW.
By that point, all of our cash flow will be from, just about from renewables. To source this, we've expanded our operations from Canada in 2015. We had all of our facilities in Canada back in 2015, just eight years ago, to today, where we operate across six countries. Total shareholder returns, total annualized shareholder returns, have been 13% since our IPO back in the late 1990s, including reinvested dividends. A key growth driver for any company in the renewable energy sector today, talent. If you look at Northland, we went from 330 people back in 2015 to today, where we have almost 1,400 energy sector professionals. One of the big drivers of this growth has been positioning ourselves in the right markets.
We are in some of the most attractive markets for offshore wind, both mature markets like Germany, but also emerging offshore wind markets like Poland. With onshore renewables, we have set up development teams in countries with some of the most ambitious renewable energy targets and best commercial regimes, best places to do business in. We look forward to carving out a position in energy storage, and we'll talk a bit more about that later. Wendy's gonna drill down on that. We're in the ground, on the ground in two really interesting markets for energy storage: New York State and Ontario. Finally, as we look ahead to where the future growth is gonna come from in the renewable energy sector, we see a very interesting thesis forming in Atlantic Canada around green hydrogen export.
The other key element of Northland's DNA has always been being at the forefront of emerging technologies. We were an early mover in the natural gas boom in the 1990s, early 2000s, which in its day was all about displacing coal-fired and oil-fired generation. We developed and built wind and solar projects at a utility scale in Ontario and Quebec, just as that sector was getting launched. Northland was the first North American IPP to move in offshore wind in Europe, carving out a leading position in what is a fast-growing sector today. Similarly, we are moving forward with our first utility-scale battery storage project in Ontario, and we have secured a large floating offshore wind site lease last year in Scotland. Finally, we are starting, as I said, to explore the feasibility of green hydrogen, both export and co-located projects.
You can be in the right markets and focused in the right new technologies, but if you don't have a project, all you have is an idea. A key success factor for Northland has been originating and securing the right projects. We secured among the first wind projects in Quebec after Le Nordais. Gemini was the largest, second-largest offshore wind project ever when we came into its development back in 2013. Hai Long and Baltic Power were both early mover projects in Taiwan and Poland, respectively. Today, we're a leading offshore wind site developer in Korea as that market starts to look more and more interesting. With growing attention to floating offshore wind, we secured last year the 1.5 GW site that I referred to in Scotland.
Wendy's gonna drill down on the Oneida Energy Storage Project, we think we're positioning ourselves well in battery storage going forward. It will be the largest battery storage project in Canada and among the largest in North America. The foundation of Northland has always been this dynamic between entrepreneurial drive, looking at what's next and trying to be there, making sure that we're gonna be there, and disciplined investment decisions. Vision leads you, disciplined investment decisions are what drives attractive and superior shareholder returns. With project origination and development, we have a very decentralized structure. We have regional development officers around the world in the key markets, boots on the ground, who can source and originate good opportunities for the company. The investment committee and investment decisions are highly centralized. The investment committee is chaired by Pauline, our CFO.
It gets inputs from market analysis teams, government relations teams, financial and technical teams across the company. We use a reference rate methodology that seeks to account for market risk, cash flow quality, and other risks. An important decision to deploy capital is having the right talent to properly execute on projects. You can make the right decision on where you're gonna deploy capital, pick the right projects, but you need the talent to execute, certainly in favorable times, but definitely in more challenging times as well. We think a key competitive advantage for Northland is our 340-person offshore wind team. It's a talent set that is very much sought after these days, and we view it as I said, a really big competitive advantage in the market.
Our onshore renewables team has teams on the ground with local market knowledge and the skills to create new onshore wind projects and solar projects, and find ways to improve the projects that we already have operating as well. As you can see, we've got growing storage, hydrogen, and commercial offtake origination teams as well to make sure that Northland is positioned for where the market is going. Finally, we've got a project management office and a project finance team, I think Free is here who heads it up, which pull together all of the technical and the financial elements of these projects. Optimizing returns also means optimizing and de-risking our facilities. We're very proud that our operating teams have kept our operating facilities going at a very high level of availability.
A really great example of this is a main bearing replacement campaign at the Nordsee One facility in the North Sea. Our teams identified a degradation on a main component on that project on a couple of turbines through sensors that we have embedded in the turbines two years ago. They went out and confirmed physically that there was degradation on those turbines. Worse, they came to the conclusion that it probably was the dreaded serial defect that was gonna spread across all of the turbines on that wind farm. A plan was formed quickly to derate the turbines that were most affected to make sure that they can continue operating during the high wind months, so deliver the performance that the company needs, while we went out and procured the replacement parts and the vessels needed to go out and do that work.
Over 18 months, every nacelle on that wind turbine, wind project was opened up. The hub was taken off, the blades were taken off, the nacelle was opened up, and that main component that was damaged was removed and replaced with a refabricated main component. This whole project took about 18 months. Throughout it, we were able to keep that offshore wind project operating at about 95% availability. It was done within budget, ahead of schedule, which meant it was done basically by early October of this past year. It meant that by late October, November, when the winds really started picking up, every one of those turbines was able to operate at full capacity. I think we're at about 98% capacity through October and November. Some other highlights from last year.
We secured what is one of the biggest corporate PPAs ever in the world on the Hai Long project. We made huge progress in locking down our three most advanced offshore wind projects. We completed our first solar project in Colombia. We got ahead of our capital funding needs, which Pauline will walk you through in more detail later, with the successful launch of the ATM or the At-the-Market program, as well as with the Hai Long sell down to Gentari, division of PETRONAS. High energy prices in Europe also generated some organic funds from our onshore and offshore projects in Europe. Finally, refinancing of some of our operating assets provided additional growth funding, and we also closed on the sale of two thermal facilities in Ontario to provide, again, some additional growth funding as well.
We advanced our growth, and development pipeline by forming the 1.6 GW Nordseecluster in partnership with RWE. We secured 2.3 GW in leases in the ScotWind lease auction last year. We gained further offshore wind site exclusivity in Korea. In Canada, we really brought the focus back to our domestic market by securing a 1.6 GW solar portfolio and development team in Alberta. That just happened in the last few weeks. Finally, we're just now advancing on an Ontario battery storage project. This past year also saw the launch of our sell down strategy with our first sell down at Hai Long to the PETRONAS subsidiary, Gentari, and we have two other sell down processes currently in progress.
Matching up our development assets to these big pools of capital that are looking to invest in renewables at the asset level does a couple of things for us, a few things for us. It enhances our project returns. It accelerates value creation, so it pulls forward some of those cash flows. It helps us manage market risk and market exposure and single asset exposure, enhances corporate liquidity, helps us manage our DevEx spend as well, and it provides, of course, non-dilutive capital funding. Looking ahead, the next one year, two years maybe, in our view, is all about capturing the tailwinds, and there are substantial tailwinds for the sector. Also managing some real headwinds that have emerged.
In terms of tailwinds, you've got the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act or the IRA, providing incredible incentives for the sector in the U.S. and helping spur some investment in the supply chain, which is very important globally. In Canada, we've got the proposed investment tax credits that were announced last fall that will be confirmed in some form in the budget late March, early April. The EU has put forward three different programs, the Green Deal, REPowerEU, and the Green Deal Industrial Plan that was just announced recently. They also have the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that actually is driving a lot of renewable energy development outside of Europe to support exporters wanting to get into the European market and secure their position moving forward, selling in Europe.
Energy security in Europe and in Northeast Asia is driving a lot of development of renewables and a lot of encouragement through policy for renewables. corporate net zero targets are driving a lot more procurement, a lot more corporate PPAs. Higher power prices, of course, are good for the sector. Finally, you're seeing very specific policies from governments to encourage hydrogen production, green hydrogen production, and energy storage. With respect to headwinds, you can't discount what's going on in the market today. Supply chain constraints put a big priority on us locking down our supply contracts on our big projects much earlier than we would have done otherwise. Certainly have driven up capital costs. Tight labor markets create a bit of a war for talent and drive up salaries.
Higher financing costs now need to work their way through eventually to higher offtake prices, but there is a timing issue there. There certainly is a dynamic that we're seeing over the last year of increased capital costs, which I'll talk about in a second. The bottom line is we've gotta make sure that we're positioning ourselves to benefit from these tailwinds that we see out there but ensuring that these headwinds are managed and mitigated to the extent possible. It's all about smart and disciplined growth. I like this chart 'cause it gives you a sense of where each one of our most advanced offshore wind projects is at.
Nordseecluster, the first phase of Nordseecluster is just in procurement right now, so moving towards turbine selection, and other major supply chain selection decisions are coming up. Baltic Power is beyond that, is already signed up preferred supplier agreements, locked down heads of terms, so key terms for those contracts, and are now converting those into full contracts. You move over to the right-hand side, Hai Long has just about all of its contracts, all of its capital costs now locked down, and is well into the financing process. Over the last year, offshore wind project costs have gone up as much as 20%-30%. There's similar cost increases across renewables.
Building on the prior slide, both Hai Long and Baltic Power are in fairly good shape in terms of locking down project costs, albeit higher levels than initially expected. On Hai Long, the CPPA that we layered on last year on top of the 744 MW of the full 1 GW project, so it's layered on top of a utility PPA that we had on that 744 MW, has helped mitigate some, but certainly not all of those capital cost increases. Changes as made this fall in the Polish offshore wind CFD, so the government went out and just made some changes in how the CFD or how the PPA for those offshore wind projects was structured, allowed us to redenominate all or the vast majority of that contract into euros from Polish zloty.
It also moved the indexation date back one year earlier to January 2022. Those two changes, we believe, will allow us to restore the economics on that project back to where they were with our original investment decision to enter that project. If you look at Nordseecluster, our procurement process, as I mentioned, is just now getting underway, and we're starting to uncover certainly, as expected, some higher costs on the supply chain. What we're still determining, what's yet to be determined is to what extent that's gonna be offset with the corporate PPAs that we originate for that project. Our origination team is just now going out into the market, and in the coming months will determine where the energy price is, where the clearing price is at for corporate PPAs.
We know it's gonna be higher than it was when we originally made the investment decision, given what's gone on with energy prices in Europe. We just don't know how much higher until we really get out there. Now our strategy remains generally constant every year, but our course always adjusts a bit, right? At this juncture for Northland, this means a focus shift from pipeline origination to really drilling down more on project execution, converting the pipeline that we've built up over the last few years into operating projects and cash flow. We've got a renewed focus on Canada as our domestic market starts to really move again, uncovering some really interesting prospects from coast to coast, really.
More development asset sell downs are gonna be part of our business going forward, more partnerships at the asset level, a growing focus on storage, and starting to explore the feasibility of hydrogen projects. Our corporate origination team is becoming much more important for Northland as you see the world moving more towards corporate offtake, with fewer sovereign-backed PPAs available, certainly in more mature markets. Finally, we're starting to tighten our focus, looking at all the markets that we're in and starting to tighten up on the markets that we've discovered to be the most attractive. We're also adjusting how we organize ourselves. We're shifting from a functional organization design to one that is technology-based, with business units. We have an offshore wind business unit headed by David Povall, who previously was the Executive Vice President of Development.
He's in Europe right now with part of his team. Our onshore renewables team, which includes solar, onshore wind, and storage, is headed by Michelle Chislett, who's here today just over there. She was previously the head of North American Development at Northland. Our efficient natural gas and utilities business unit is headed by Calvin MacCormack, who's been with Northland for I think about 20 years and was formerly previously Vice President of Operations. We, of course, have a nascent, a business unit, a hydrogen business unit that is housed under Wendy Franks, who's our Chief Strategy Officer.
This structure is all about getting better end-to-end ownership through a project's life cycle from operations or from origination all the way through to operations and making sure that we have the right talent around the table as each business unit makes decisions, whether it's about operations or whether it's about growth investments. We also have a new Chief Legal Officer and Head of Sustainability, Yonni Fushman , who's just over there right next to Michelle. Yonni comes from a large contractor, so as we move more into project execution, his knowledge and skills are certainly gonna be very valuable to the company. We've already spoken a fair bit about what the priorities of the offshore wind business unit are. The onshore renewables business unit will be bringing a number of or two New York wind projects into operations this year.
They're also gonna be bringing La Lucha, our Spanish, or Mexican rather, solar project, a 130 MW solar project, bringing that into operation. Very pleased that we received an extension on our generation license just a few days ago, and that came out of some high-level meetings that were held last month. That's certainly very, very encouraging to see that project now move towards testing and commissioning. The onshore renewables team is also looking at development work in Alberta, Spain, Colombia, Ontario, New York, and Poland, as I mentioned earlier. The efficient natural gas and utilities business unit will be exploring optimization and expansion opportunities at our Thorold gas-fired facility in Ontario and is otherwise focused on growing the EBSA distribution business in Colombia.
Finally, the hydrogen business unit is focused on feasibility studies on projects and opportunities in Canada and in Colombia. Looking forward, our most advanced and our capitalized development projects will more than double our operating capacity over the next few years. Looking further ahead and considering our earlier stage projects that are now entering development stages, we can see the business growing to 12 GW, with some assumptions embedded there on project attrition. Northland has. Fixed signaling to me. Certainly has a robust pipeline of development projects, but we want to make it clear that it doesn't mean that we'll be building all of these projects. We won't be building all of these projects. A robust development pipeline gives us optionality.
It gives us optionality in terms of which projects we decide to invest our capital in, and it also gives us optionality on sell down. It gives us optionality in terms of how much capital we invest in each project too. We're very proud of our progress that we've made on ESG targets and metrics. On gender diversity, 33% of our board and half of our executive are female, and we've made a commitment on board diversity beyond gender as well. Since 2019, we've reduced our carbon emissions by 30% on an intensity basis, and we're very pleased to commit today to reaching a science-aligned net zero target for overall emission scopes one, two, and three by 2040. We'll do a quick drill down into our development pipeline, our growth pipeline.
20 GW pipeline, well diversified across technologies and markets. Our presence on the ground in those markets is a key success factor going forward. If you look at offshore wind, energy security, decarbonization policies are really driving increased targets for offshore wind and accelerating permitting timelines, particularly in Europe. Targets across the offshore wind markets in which we're present, which we've got listed on the slide, range from 12 GW all the way up to 70 GW. We can go through all of the targets, but the bottom line is there's gonna be a lot of offshore wind built in the coming years. The Baltic Power project in Poland has a 15 MW Vestas turbine. To give you a sense of scale, Gemini had a 4 MW turbine when it was built five, six, seven years ago.
We've got a strong local partner on that project, PKN ORLEN, the oil and gas major in Poland, and a great project development team. We're very pleased how the Polish government has responded to some of the market disruptions that have happened the last year by making changes to the CFD and PPA that I outlined earlier. Nordseecluster has procurement underway now. We've got a strong partner with RWE, again, in this case, a major German utility. Procurement has commenced, and the offtake sounding is really gonna give us a sense of where the final project economics are gonna end up on that project. Hai Long's costs are now pretty much completely locked down. The financing process is well underway, it's taking longer than we had originally anticipated.
We're also encountering some challenges due to local market conditions, which I think are well known. Despite the slower pace on financing, we and our partners have maintained the project schedule and the buffers in that schedule to maintain the risk profile of that project by providing material funding for certain fabrication activities on the project. As I already noted in the prior slide, Taiwan is looking to build a lot more renewable power, a lot more offshore wind in the years ahead. Late last year, we were awarded a 500 MW lease, another lease for an offshore wind project in Taiwan. The team there is currently working with some of the people in Toronto to assess the viability of that project, whether or not we're gonna move forward with it.
We're also continuing forward with our negotiations and discussions with Gentari, the PETRONAS subsidiary, on a broader partnership that would cover all offshore wind development in Taiwan, not just on the Hai Long project. South Korea is a very interesting offshore wind market, we think it's one that's really well-suited to Northland. It's a market where you, with the way the regulations work, you actually earn your site exclusivity through good development work, which is what Northland's good at. Our all-Korean team has secured site exclusivity on 1.3 GW across a total portfolio across three different projects of 3.4 GW, those projects are all at different stages of development.
An emerging driver for offshore wind in Korea is ensuring that their exporting industry have access to renewable power so that they can maintain their access to the European market as Carbon Border Adjustment Measures are expected to be put in place in the years to come. Onshore renewables across Europe, Canada, U.S., the same policies that are accelerating offshore wind are also driving renewed growth in onshore renewables and storage. Colombia is really one of the last LatAm markets to start deploying and moving forward with solar and wind. Most of their hydro sites have now been developed. In fact, just about all of their hydro sites have now been developed, so the only option for kinda new renewable generation is wind and solar.
You're seeing a lot of activity on the ground in terms of development, and you're also seeing the utilities there moving to procure renewable power as well. We've consciously picked onshore markets where we see strong growth prospects, so a lot of need for new renewable power, good policy supporting that, good favorable investment climates, and finally, markets where we think that we can create some kind of competitive advantage for Northland. Onshore renewables is very competitive. You've gotta figure out how you can create a competitive advantage, or you shouldn't be in that market. As I said earlier, we've got a renewed focus on North America, but particularly on Canada. The 1.6 GW Greengate portfolio that we acquired with their development team is a big step forward in Canadian development for us.
There's a robust corporate offtake market, as you know, in that province. In Ontario, we now have a majority position in a 250 MW battery storage project and a broader storage pipeline that we're building up. In New York, we've got the two wind projects that will be coming online this year, but there's also a 700+ MW solar development pipeline that we're moving forward bit by bit. Finally, as I mentioned, we're very pleased that the 130 MW La Lucha project now in Mexico is moving forward to commissioning and testing and commissioning. This gives you a little bit of a breakdown on the Greengate portfolio that we acquired. As you can see, it's spread out across late stage, mid stage, early-stage solar projects.
There's some battery storage elements to the portfolio as well. The big driver there is provincial and federal regulations are driving emitters to purchase carbon offsets by entering into corporate offtake. We think we're well-positioned in a market that we think will continue to offer good growth opportunities. In Spain, I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation that we're looking at ways to optimize some of our operating assets that we already have. In Spain, it's called hybridization, so we're looking at all of our wind projects that we acquired two years ago and adding solar to some of those projects or even all of those projects and optimizing the interconnection that we have on those sites.
We think that's probably the first growth opportunity that we would be able to pursue in Spain. We're still assessing the feasibility of it, but it looks promising. In Poland, we're leveraging our position in Baltic Power and our presence in that market to now work with developers on onshore wind and solar projects there. Energy security is a big priority in Poland, and it's driving a lot of development for renewables, broadly speaking. Colombia, we got our first solar project, as I mentioned, came online last year, and we also secured a PPA for a 130 MW solar project last year as well. This is just another representation of our growth pipeline, breaking it down by technology as it goes up to doubling by 2027 and quadrupling, we believe, as much by 2030.
Now I'd like to turn it over to Wendy Franks to talk about storage and hydrogen.
Thanks, Mike. Do I get to hold this?
Green forward, red back.
Okay. All right. Hi, everyone. The CEO gets his comments on the prompter. Mine are on paper. Let me just get settled. Can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. Okay, good. Okay. Hi. As Mike mentioned, my name is Wendy Franks. Under our new corporate structure, I lead our hydrogen business unit, and I also have responsibility for overall corporate strategy. It's my pleasure this morning to be here to talk about our new businesses, storage and hydrogen. Okay. Just a few words up front, the context for these new businesses. When I joined a couple years ago, the part of my remit was to incubate and build out these businesses. We envisioned them as catalysts for the next wave of long-term growth. Both areas are highly synergistic to Northland.
They strengthen both our competitive positioning in the market and they strengthen our core capabilities as a renewable power developer and operator. We allocated a modest amount of resources to these areas relatively early, as it's turning out, the growth is as we envisioned that these areas would be growing, the growth has actually come, and it's actually been quite strong. As a result, you know, our thesis here is really playing out, Northland is extremely well-positioned. In the storage market, what drives this market, as you can see, it's expected to be a very large market. It's basically driven by the need to stabilize the grid.
This role was normally paid by natural gas peaker plants, but going forward, that fleet is aging, and there's, you know, limited appetite to add new natural gas peaker plants. It's also not economic if you think that the asset life is only gonna be 10 years. Battery storage is a stabilizing force in the grid, and as you add more intermittent renewables, obviously there's a greater need then to stabilize the grid. Back to the point that it's synergistic with what we do because it reinforces our ability and the system operator's ability to add more renewables into the grid. In Ontario, for example, where the batteries can be charged overnight, with clean power, renewable power, or nuclear, or hydro, the stabilizing force then is low carbon.
That's quite a good overall story. Longer term, we see other storage solutions, such as pumped storage, will also play a role in the grid. Northland's near-term strategy for storage, it's really primarily been focused on our domestic market, right? I think that's very logical. When you embark in a new business, you wanna be in your home market where you can leverage your existing network access to government, access to funding, et cetera. For example, in Ontario, the system operator has recently announced a series of RFPs for 2,500 MW over the next couple of years. Got this out of order. The province is expected to need as much as 7 GW over the next decade.
For that near-term RFP, the system operator is offering 20 to 22 year contracts, and these, you know, government-backed long-term contracts is very attractive for Northland and something that we like to target. Additionally, we're evaluating, as Mike mentioned, the co-location of batteries at some of our U.S. projects, namely in New York State. We're also looking at the role that batteries can play, particularly in very dense urban areas, and providing the critical grid capacity. The last thing I'll say on storage is that we're very pleased to report that late last year, Northland entered into a partnership agreement on the Oneida project. This is a partnership with NRStor, which is really a leading battery developer in Ontario, and a First Nations partner, Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation.
The project, it's quite large, as Mike mentioned, 250 MW, four hours of storage, 1,000 MW h. It's located in Haldimand County, which is on the north shore of Lake Erie. It's the largest battery storage project in Canada and one of the largest in North America. Upon closing of the transaction, Northland will be a majority owner, we'll take the lead working with our partners, we have tremendous partners. If anyone knows Matt Jamieson from Six Nations, he's built up you know, an incredible balance sheet for his community. Annette Verschuren is the CEO, for those who know her, she's an absolute tour de force in the industry.
We'll take the lead on construction, financing, and operations, but working in close collaboration with these very strong partners. Financial close for the project is expected this year, with commercial operations in 2025. Another example of a storage project that we have here in Ontario is the Marmora project. This is a 400 MW pumped storage project, it's a different technology, and we believe that these different technologies have a role to play in the grid. As I mentioned before, that, you know, the province really needs the capacity. My team has incubated this business, going forward, it's going to transition over to Michelle. Over to you, Michelle. Next one. Switching gears to hydrogen.
As you can see, hydrogen is expected to be also a very large market. It is rapidly developing. Green hydrogen is a low-carbon form of storable, transportable, and dispatchable energy, and that's quite unique. It's produced when clean power, wind or solar, is fed into an electrolyser to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The market is expected to grow. We've got our estimate here, $15 trillion by 2050 globally. Growth is driven by the need to decarbonize energy for standard use cases like power generation, but also to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors like industrial processes, chemical processes, and transportation. Northland's strategy here is to leverage our wind development capabilities as we develop wind-to-hydrogen projects, initially primarily focused in Canada.
The Canadian government has been very constructive, the federal and at the provincial level. Tax credits have been announced, as Mike mentioned. We believe that this is an important part of the thesis, that it is the countries that are able to bring forward these tax credits and these other government support mechanisms that are gonna play a leading role globally. We think Canada is a great place to be in for this market. Chrystia Freeland announced this morning, even as part of a meeting she's having later today, a discussion around making sure that Canada is competitive with the Inflation Reduction Act.
You hear this government support in terms of financial support, but for anyone who's following what's going on in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, the provincial government has also been very constructive in bringing forward the permitting mechanisms that are needed to actually develop the project. We're initially focused on the east coast of Canada. The logic for that, the reason is very simple. There's a very strong untapped renewable wind resource there. In Newfoundland, for example, it's just very high wind speeds with a huge amount of onshore wind. That configuration of having that really best-in-class wind together with the land that you need, and close to areas where you can have a port. That configuration is.
It's actually quite unique, and it's not to be underestimated how difficult it is to get all of those components in one place together with access to fresh water, together with access to funding, along with government support. The idea for these projects on the east coast is that the wind will be harnessed, the green electrons will be converted into hydrogen, and then the hydrogen is ultimately converted into ammonia. The reason for that is ammonia, it's much easier to transport it, so it liquefies at a lower temperature. Just to give you some numbers about the size of the market, the gray ammonia market today is 180 million tons. This is a very large market.
A 1 GW wind farm would produce about half a million tons, it's a huge market relative to, like, large projects. The EU has a target to import 50 million tons of green ammonia by 2030. To give you a sense of what that translates into, that translates into about 100 1-GW wind-to-hydrogen projects. We're aware in the world, we track the industry quite closely, we're aware of about a dozen projects that would come online in that timeframe. This kind of mismatch in supply and demand is exactly the thing that Northland likes to target, coupled with our positioning in our domestic market, which we think is, as I said, is gonna move quickly. We think that Northland, as I mentioned, is...
There's two examples of two growth areas where Northland is extremely well-positioned. With that, I'll turn it over to Pauline.
There you go.
Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Wendy. Good morning, afternoon, evening to everyone joining us today in various parts around the globe, our investors, lenders, advisors, and employees at Northland. We are proud of the accomplishments that we've achieved together as a team over the past year amidst more challenging global market conditions. As you've already heard from Mike and Wendy, we are gearing ourselves up to continue to deliver on our stated objectives in 2023. Taking stock on how we've tracked towards accomplishing the objectives we set out at last year's Investor Day, we as a team have accomplished most of what we set out to do, with a couple of items still in progress. We've also achieved many new initiatives during the year to support the strength of the balance sheet and the funding of our projects.
Specifically, we launched an ATM program to fund projects targeted for financial close, and we refinanced over $3 billion of project and corporate financings. Altogether, these activities helped to increase our undrawn liquidity and cash on hand to over $1 billion by the end of 2022. We have fully integrated the partnerships and transactions function within the capital markets team and have two processes currently underway, including the Hai Long sell-down, which Mike discussed. We are targeting to commence two additional processes this year, increasing our ever-growing dialogue with financial and strategic partners around the globe. It's a very exciting time for us. We also completed our ESG objectives through enhanced reporting, and our new 2040 net zero target was launched today upon an initiative we undertook two years ago. Our efforts this year will focus on securing project financing for our two large offshore wind projects.
As noted in our press release, the Hai Long financing is currently underway and progressing, albeit slower and more challenging than expected due to market-specific factors. The Baltic Power project financing was recently launched to the lending market. Consistent with our risk management plan and expected project financing terms, we will also finalize the preferred hedging strategies for both assets this year. Finally, we expect to complete another EBSA refinancing and close the tax equity financing for our New York wind projects later this year. 2022 was a very active year for us. We will lay out the objectives for 2023 later on in the presentation, which will highlight another busy year for our team.
With respect to the structure of the finance team, since last year's Investor Day, we have continued to add strong capabilities to the team to support global growth and execution. Focusing on the right-hand side, through a reorganization by technology business units, we have appointed three CFOs who will have a direct reporting line into myself but will also serve as the finance partners for their respective BU executive. The key benefits of this BU structure were that we will have strong, dedicated leadership over each business unit over all aspects of finance that are consistent and established upon a uniform set of standards and controls, all of which line into our overall corporate business plan for Northland. Our offshore wind CFO was previously the CFO of our Gemini Wind Park in the Netherlands.
Our onshore CFO was previously our finance director for Spain, and our natural gas and utility CFO was previously leading our financial integrations group within our corporate reporting team. Although they are located in Amsterdam, Madrid, and Toronto, respectively, they already have a track record of working really well together and with the rest of the finance team, and we have very strong collaboration and alignment in our overall leadership principles. As our hydrogen business unit is built out over time, we will look to build out the CFO function there as well. On the left-hand side, the corporate groups, which, as everyone knows here, were largely Toronto-based a few years ago, have also built out into strong teams with a global presence.
Another notable change is that the capital markets team has recently been consolidated to include project finance, treasury and corporate finance, partnership and transactions, and our investor relations teams. We believe bringing this team together holistically is optimal as we continue to strengthen our overall corporate global position and the relationships that we have with Canadian and international financial institutions, along with export credit agencies or ECAs, to support our global growth ambitions and enhance our liquidity and funding through both our capital markets activities and our planned sell downs. Our long-term financial objectives and how we are managing our business and balance sheet remain unchanged from the prior years.
We continue to pursue cash flow resiliency through sourcing long-term contracts with government or corporate offtake that are bankable under traditional non-recourse renewable project finance structures while hedging out our variable costs and cash flow streams for the long term. Maintaining our investment-grade balance sheet is a key objective to support future growth. This is important for both the cash and credit obligations to fund our development projects. We remain disciplined about our capital allocation, balancing the diversity of cash flows between near-term and long-term accretive opportunities. This will be managed both within and across the business units going forward. We believe we have a prudent and achievable funding plan. Our balance sheet funding plan provides us with the flexibility to access various required pools of capital for the total project costs associated with our capitalized projects. I will get into more details on this later in the presentation.
Additionally, as Mike noted, we have been managing risks by locking down our costs. We also enter into hedges on or before financial close so that we have full visibility into funding our projects as they enter construction. Our funding philosophy at Northland remains the same. Our permanent growth funding starts with sourcing non-recourse project-level debt with tenor aligned to the contracted revenue stream. Remaining sources of the capital stack are sensitized and optimized to minimize cost and risk and maintain our investment-grade rating. We manage the right-hand side of our balance sheet conservatively and always with sufficient financial liquidity and buffers, especially with respect to our development assets. Lastly, we use no to very little corporate debt in our capital stack, which is conservative and manages the risk on our balance sheet holistically.
This year, we are looking at our first potential corporate hybrid issuance as part of our funding plan for the year. It will be kept to a very manageable level. Our funding model continues to support a conservative balance sheet. We have approximately CAD 7.5 billion of consolidated debt on our balance sheet today, which is fully non-recourse, fixed rate, fixed term, project-level debt, and is excluded from our corporate metrics by the rating agencies. This non-recourse project-level debt has an average term of about 10 years, which is lined up to amortize with our PPA maturities, and all interest rate exposure is swapped at an all-in rate of approximately 3.5%. Post PPA, these renewable assets will accordingly be unlevered.
Perhaps this year, more than others, investors have been focusing in on our hedging strategy and risk mitigation efforts across FX and interest rate exposures and the ultimate repatriation of cash distributions. In Europe, which is about 60% of our cash flow, we have long-term protection. We have always matched our funding currency to construction costs. All of our project debt in Europe was fully hedged at or before financial close for the full life of the loans. The majority of our cash distributions are also hedged over the long term, which is increasingly being managed and planned for at a corporate level to efficiently fund our new growth within Europe.
In Taiwan, we intend to secure medium-term protection between five-10 years at or before financial close, which is in line with both our risk management strategy and our expected project finance terms. Hai Long would be targeting to raise project finance debt primarily in New Taiwan dollars, while some construction costs are denominated in other currencies. Any construction cost not met with the funding currency will be hedged by financial close. With respect to interest rates, we intend to hedge the variable rate exposure over the liquid period, which is approximately 10 years. Our cash distributions will be hedged as far out as possible, currently expected to be about five years, with a rolling hedge strategy beyond this period.
In Colombia, which is about 10% of our cash flow, we have shorter-term currency and interest rate hedges in place given market-specific characteristics. Our key local utility asset, EBSA, has revenue that benefits from inflation protection as the rate base is indexed to Colombian CPI. This contractual and regulatory structure has provided strong natural protection against changes in the Colombian peso. We also maintain a rolling hedge program to repaint the Colombian peso distributions, and we have long-term interest rate protection associated with the EBSA non-recourse financing. The slide everyone waits for every year. To update our funding requirements for our capitalized projects, we are now forecasting a total of CAD 16 billion-CAD 19 billion of capital costs. Our funding plan provides us with the ability to maintain the flexibility across various sources of capital pools to fund these project costs.
Of this total, CAD 13 billion-CAD 15 billion, or over 80%, relates to Hai Long and Baltic Power, which are progressing towards financial close this year. Upon delivering our capitalized projects, which to be clear, only includes the projects which costs capitalized to our balance sheet today under IFRS criteria, we expect to deliver a solid 7%-10% EBITDA growth per year. We are targeting to drive growth in free cash flow and adjusted free cash flow per share over the long term. This slide shows our funding plan over the next 5 years to support the capital requirements of our projects. We intend to secure approximately 65%-70% of the capital required, or approximately $11 billion through new long-term non-recourse amortizing project debt. We will also target 100% of our project financings to be green where possible.
Northland's equity requirements are expected to be approximately 15% of the total capital required, or approximately CAD 2.5 billion, of which CAD 1.7 billion has already been announced to date through our ATM and the sell down. The remainder will be funded through a combination of cash on hand, proceeds from non-recourse financings of our existing facilities, potential ATM issuances under our existing program, and sell downs of partial interest in our development projects. Almost all of our projects are already owned in strategic partnerships, either with local or existing partners, who on average contribute approximately 10% or CAD 2.3 billion of the total capital required. Pre-completion revenues, where applicable, is another source of funding for project costs where the turbines commence revenue generation prior to declaring COD on the full project.
This counts for approximately 5% of the funding plan. Finally, we expect to use corporate balance sheet capacity on a very limited basis to secure approximately CAD 0.5 billion-CAD 1 billion of green corporate debt instruments, including potentially green corporate hybrid debt to optimize our funding, enhancing our returns, keeping within our investment grade criteria. We believe that our funding plan is achievable and overall, the principles are in line with how Northland has historically funded all of its growth projects. We have redundant sources of capital to execute on our remaining funding plan at both the corporate and asset level. Currently, we have two sell downs in progress and expect to launch more processes in 2023. Securing green corporate hybrid debt is targeted later for this year.
The funds raised from our ATM program to date have materially de-risked our funding plan for Hai Long and Baltic Power, and we continue to have the financial flexibility with over CAD 1 billion of current available liquidity. This table shows our capitalized costs and funding requirements broken down by project. All of this translates to nearly 3 GW of growth projects and CAD 16 billion-CAD 19 billion of costs, or CAD 6 billion-CAD 9 billion at Northland's net interest, which is net of the Hai Long sell down to be delivered and funded over the next five years. Gross capital investments include costs to advance these projects to financial close. The changes from last year's funding plan relate to about CAD 4.5 billion of higher capital spend.
This includes approximately CAD 2.3 billion of capital costs related to new projects being secured and capitalized, including our 49% interest in the Gode Wind offshore wind project in Germany with our partner RWE, the Oneida Battery Energy Storage project in Ontario, which Wendy spoke about, and the increase in the gross capacity at Baltic Power. The remaining CAD 2.2 billion relates to increased costs for reasons discussed earlier by Mike, which have partial offsets. From an exposure perspective, we are also reducing our net share of costs through partial sell downs. Despite the higher costs year-over-year on a portfolio basis, we expect to generate low double-digit returns for our projects, including sell downs.
Once operational, these projects, particularly Hai Long and Baltic Power, would be expected to generate material accretion to free cash flow and adjusted free cash flow relative to our 2023 guidance as a basis. This slide shows the more detailed sources and uses plan for 2023. This shows CAD 2.2 billion of capital deployment towards projects targeted for financial close this year, of which CAD 1.7 billion has already been sourced, with approximately CAD 500 million remaining. We believe the CAD 500 million is manageable for 2023 and will be funded using possible sell down proceeds, hybrid bonds, cash liquidity on hand, potential ATM issuances, and asset refinancings. We believe there is ample redundancy in sources available to us to fund our equity requirements for 2023.
While we are not planning on selling down a partial interest in Baltic Power at this time, we intend to sell down other development projects to support our funding plan. The partial sell down of development assets is a core component of our funding strategy and will become a recurring part of our business going forward. Sell downs and the flexibility on how and when we execute to will enable us to meet our funding and capital recycling objectives, manage our jurisdictional exposures, crystallize development profit prior to or at financial close, enhance our free cash flow and our liquidity position and our project returns, amongst other benefits. In addition to the multiple points on the benefits of our sell down partnering strategy already outlined today, ultimately, we aim to unlock value from executing on our development pipeline.
The value paid for a project can depend on a number of different factors beyond the stage of a project, including location, scale, quality, and the duration of the offtake, to name a few. In the early stages, typically, a value per megawatt drives the purchase price, with milestone payments earned as the project continues to be de-risked. Once the project achieves financial close or COD, a DCF valuation of cash flows drives the purchase price. Based on available market comps, we continue to believe we can enhance our Northland repatriated equity returns by on average 200-400 basis points for contracted offshore wind assets at financial close. There continues to be strong interest from high creditworthy institutions who are comfortable with investing at financial close or earlier.
Of course, we are targeting to close our first sell down this year and further execute additional sell downs to demonstrate value creation in our own projects. This slide shows the significant value in our development pipeline that is expected to deliver growth in absolute megawatts and EBITDA through 2027 and beyond. Our five-year capitalized project plan has tripled from historical levels and reflects a solid but manageable growth trajectory for the company. Growth and capital allocation continues to be focused on offshore wind, supplemented by onshore renewables with shorter-term development cycles, which will deliver nearer-term cash flow growth. Our 10 GW pipeline of publicly announced projects offers solid opportunities for growth. It is important to note, as Mike reiterated, that Northland will selectively pursue only the projects that meet our strategic objectives and disciplined investment return requirements.
This is a slide we first introduced two years ago at our Investor Day that we update annually. Our capitalized projects are expected to deliver solid growth in EBITDA, increasing to a range of $1.7 billion-$1.9 billion by 2027. These ranges account for the fact that sell down strategies and targets are not yet finalized and outcomes may vary. Nonetheless, the key message of this slide is that we expect not only to increase our EBITDA, but more importantly, the quality of our cash flow as well. Furthermore, we will be diversifying our cash flows as new projects come online. In the illustrative 2030 EBITDA on this slide, we reflect a risk-adjusted contribution from the recently announced Alberta portfolio, CanWind in Taiwan, Nordseec luster B, our Korea projects, our projects in Japan, and ScotWind.
This, again, is illustrated to show the level of growth potential of the company, even only if some of these projects are pursued to completion. This gives us all a good vision and ambition for the company's EBITDA generation by the end of the decade. Near-term 2023 guidance. This morning, we released our financial guidance for 2023, including adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow, and adjusted free cash flow. I will focus on describing the key elements of our guidance herein, as our press release has fulsome details. We released adjusted EBITDA of CAD 1.2 billion-CAD 1.3 billion, adjusted free cash flow of CAD 1.70-CAD 1.90 per share, and free cash flow of CAD 1.30-CAD 1.50 per share.
Focusing on our 2023 adjusted free cash flow guidance bridge, we expect CAD 0.50 per share of higher operational cash flows, primarily from increased contributions in Spain. Offsets, we had approximately CAD 0.40 per share of cash flows in 2022 that will not reoccur in 2023, including cash flows recognized from higher market prices in Europe over and above our subsidy rates and other items that have been previously disclosed. Our pipeline of secured projects has grown substantially over the last year, we continue to invest in our people, resources, and platform to execute and deliver. We are investing in new teams such as the hydrogen business unit, as you heard about today, and adding capabilities within our business units and functional teams to continue to execute on our secured projects on a global basis.
These costs amount to approximately CAD 0.20 per share of higher expenses in 2023. Net-net, this all results into adjusted free cash flow midpoint of CAD 1.80 and a range of CAD 1.70-CAD 1.90 per share before our development expenditures. Our DevEx this year is expected to be about CAD 0.40 per share to fund the identified projects such as Nordsee Three and Delta, Scotland, the Alberta portfolio, and the battery storage project, amongst others. Our 2023 free cash flow per share guidance range is at a midpoint of CAD 1.40 or a range of CAD 1.30-CAD 1.50 per share. To conclude today's presentation, I have listed out our objectives for 2023. Our goals are to further diversify our sources of corporate capital to enhance our financing flexibility while maintaining our investment-grade rating.
Onboard our new business unit CFOs and new org structure to support execution and capital allocation focused by technology. Execute on the non-recourse project financings and refinancings that I laid out today. Continue to strengthen the global positioning with financial institutions, along with Export Credit Agencies, to support our global growth, enhance our liquidity. Continue to diversify and bring value forward of our development assets through additional sell downs and finalize our preferred debt and equity hedging strategies for our two large offshore wind projects. It will be another busy year for the company, and we look forward to providing you with updates on our quarterly conference calls in 2023. Thank you for attending our investor day today. I will now turn it back over to you, Mike, to conclude.
Thanks everybody for coming out today on such a cold morning, as I mentioned at the beginning. Northland's operating assets have performed extremely well, as I said, with very high levels of availability over the last year and allowed us to capture some really high energy prices, particularly in Europe. Our offshore, onshore, and solar growth pipelines have grown over the last year, we look forward to, in the coming year, seeing projects both enter construction, but also some enter commercial operations over the next year as well. We've moved now forward with our first energy storage project. We talked about energy storage last year. Now we're moving forward with our first energy storage project and starting to look at the viability of hydrogen projects as well. Our sector's got big tailwinds. There's no question about that.
We think we're well-positioned in some key growth markets to really take advantage of those tailwinds. At the same time, there are some very clear near-term headwinds that we have to deal with. We need to properly manage those headwinds and grow in a disciplined and responsible way. We look forward to your questions, and we're gonna linger around a bit after lunch, so we can do some one-on-one chat too, but look forward to your questions now. Go ahead.
Hi, this is Rupert Merere of National Bank. Pauline, you mentioned part of your financing plan though the two more sell downs. Can you give us any more color on what you might look to sell down and how that will help you?
Yeah. We're looking at selling down only development assets, to be clear, targeted Europe and Asia.
With the sell down plan, you laid out the last couple of years what you hope to get from the sell down, how they might help the returns on the project. Can you give us any more color with Hai Long? How did you rate that sell down? Can you give us some color maybe on the development uplift or what it might have done for returns on your investment?
Well, that sell down is not yet closed. You know, as we achieve financial close on Hai Long, just like any other project, we will provide, you know, our EBITDA free cash flow metrics on that project. I think right now would be too premature to do that. The sell down would close officially on or before financial close, which is the target right now.
You can imagine there'll be a true-up mechanism to final.
Yeah
... economics in the project.
Thank you.
Thanks. Andrew Kuske, Credit Suisse. I guess the question is at the heart of it, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Is there sort of an extreme of just building assets and owning the assets, and the other extreme would be like a full asset management kind of model, where you're taking in capital from others, maybe earning a fee over a period of time. Like, you're sort of pushing a little bit towards an asset management with really a promote on the sell down to Gentari. Where do you see yourselves in this evolutionary process? If you do go to the extent of more of an asset management model, can that really accelerate the growth of NPI in the current market construct, which does have a tremendous amount of favorability for a company that has expertise?
I mean, Northland will always be looking to deploy capital in attractive projects, attractive investment opportunities. What's changed over the last couple of years, which we talked a bit about last year, and now we're talking more about since we've got our first sell down already announced, is also bringing in third-party capital and partners into our projects. Using that, as I said earlier, to enhance returns, to manage market exposure on earlier stage sell downs, to manage our DevEx spend as well and manage our risk profile on early-stage development. That is gonna be a constant going forward. I'd still see in terms of where we're gonna be when we grow up, we're still gonna be deploying capital. Having a large development pipeline gives us optionality.
It allows us to be selective in terms of which projects we actually deploy our capital into, so we can be selective picking the more attractive ones. You can also look at how much capital we actually deploy into each project and gear up or gear down on sell downs and partnering in that respect. It also gives us more flexibility. You looked at the funding plan that Pauline outlined just a couple of minutes ago. If you look at the kind of different elements of that pie chart that she put out there, we can move up or down on a number of them, including on sell downs, depending on market conditions. It gives us more flexibility. It de-risks our funding plan going forward.
Yeah. The other thing I'd add to that is that, you know, locally, I mean, their lenders, ECAs, are involved in the purchase 'cause of Northland's equity sponsorship. Our equity sponsorship will always have to be a fairly significant portion. You know, our sell downs are targeted to be the range of 25%-49% of our interest, because, you know, a lot of the reasons why we get, you know, participants in a project is because of Northland. For Northland to have you know, an asset management sort of model doesn't really support why Northland is so successful in building out our projects around the globe.
Appreciate that. Maybe just to follow up.
Yeah
... and it goes back to the global context and the ability to wheel capital around different markets. You know, what's happened in the U.S. and offshore is
Very well understood and very well telegraphed. A few years ago, you decided really not to participate because of what you were seeing on returns. Could you maybe just give a bit of color on the differences in return expectations market to market and your ability to play around that?
Yeah. In the U.S. it was not just returns, it was risk-adjusted returns. It was also entry costs, right? We've deliberately chosen offshore wind markets where we see lower entry costs around the world. I mean, we're... If you compare us to Ørsted's kinda in every offshore wind market. They kinda have to be in every offshore wind market, I think, to get the growth that they need. In terms of Northland, we're a smaller company than Ørsted. We can be a bit more selective in terms of which offshore wind markets we go into. The... I just wanna go back to your earlier question and say one more thing, is that there is still a constraint.
Nothing happens overnight on how much we can grow and the biggest constraint probably is talent, right? Our advantage is this offshore wind team that we've got and some really good onshore renewable development teams around the world, and these growing teams in storage and hydrogen. We need to retain those people. We also need to gradually grow those teams. There's a big battle for talent out there. The key the way we create value, right? Is by ideally originating these projects, delivering them on time, on budget, and then figuring out ways to optimize them. That all takes people, talented people. That's the, that's always gonna be the key, the key constraint. I forgot your... the second part of your follow-up question.
Return deltas around the world.
Yeah. I think things are moving as I kind of presented to you, and there's a few dynamics that are kind of shifting around. I think you would see generally similar returns across Europe and North America. I think there's some particular aspects to the Northeast U.S. offshore wind market. I don't think it's necessarily... but you'd probably see similar returns for onshore, offshore. In Asia, we're expecting to see in some markets, slightly better returns by being an early mover. But there's always specific characteristics on any given project.
Okay. Mike, we're gonna take some questions from the webcast.
Okay.
Question from Felix Brüning. How do you see the inflation impact on project profitability going forward?
Well, I mean, it's been a big change in the last year, right? I think in terms of commodity inflation, steel prices and some of those input costs, you're starting to see some of that come down. Lithium, as well, has started to come down a bit as well. That element we see easing off. That's obviously all information you guys all have access to as well. The other piece is just supply chain constraints, right? That are going on.
Our expectation, and maybe our hope, is that as you see a lot of these incentive schemes for renewables, like the IRA in the U.S., like whatever the Canadian government does, like what's going on in Europe, that signal long-term support for renewables, that the supply chain will start investing in more capacity, and then you'll start seeing some of those constraints ease up. That will start easing up some of the inflation that's being driven simply by just a limited supply.
Okay. Couple of questions that are kind of the same, I'll just lump them together. What is the strategy towards onshore and offshore wind in the U.S. and Canada and the upcoming offtake auctions?
We're not doing anything in offshore wind in the U.S. We didn't participate in the California BOEM auction. We didn't participate in recent auctions in New York State. In Canada, we have been exploring offshore wind off of Nova Scotia, which you think that's a probably a longer-term play. And we've been working with regulators and policymakers to put in place a framework for that. On the west coast of Canada, we do have some offshore wind development assets, met masts, some early stage permits on an offshore wind site there. That project is moving ahead at a fairly slow pace, but things can change.
Thanks. Sean Steuart from TD Securities. Pauline or Mike, a question on the capital cost inflation for Baltic Power in particular. It looks more significant than what you're showing for Hai Long, which I guess it's, a little bit earlier stage that explains a part of it. How much of it is the capacity growth you're talking about versus component cost inflation, for that project?
It's a bit of both. the... I think the project went from what was originally 940, 950 MW...
Yeah
... up to now just under 1.2 GW. That was a good.
Yeah
... of the capital cost increase. I don't know the split necessarily between that and just general cost escalation.
Yeah. I think that the 20%-30% relative to last year is, I mean, Hai Long, Baltic Power together.
Okay. A question on Green gate. Can you give us a little bit of background on how this came to fruition? Was this a competitive process?
We should just ask Michelle. She's just at the table there. It was a competitive process.
Okay.
Okay, we'll go back to the webcast questions. Question in from Ana Reynal. Can you clarify what you meant by saying you will leverage your wind business to develop hydrogen? I think, Wendy?
Yeah, sure. Most of the hydrogen projects that we're looking at are wind to hydrogen. For these early-stage projects, for the areas that we're looking at, we're envisioning that we would be developing the wind portion of it and that we would have an equity interest over the entire project from tip to tail, right? From generation through to the hydrogen, the ammonia, and the terminal, et cetera. Also what drives your cost of green hydrogen, it's about 60% is driven by the cost of your wind. We're able to leverage our development capabilities and expertise then to develop, you know, the majority of the cost structure.
We generally look to then partner with entities that have knowledge on the fuels side of things, so that we can bring together a successful project. We're leveraging that wind capabilities to bring forward those projects.
Mark Jarvi. Sorry, Mark Jarvi from CIBC. Couple questions around the Nordseecluster projects. You talked about, you know, the corporate PPA market getting better, but you're obviously dealing with some cost inflation. Is the expectation that price costing will come down a little bit relative to what you're seeing in inflation in Baltic power? I guess they're still on your capitalized list of projects, so just confidence level that those projects ultimately get built out here in the next couple years.
There's two phases to the Nordseecluster, right? The roughly both 750 MW or 800 MW each. It's the first phase that we're in procurement on right now. That's where we're getting visibility starting to get visibility on the capital cost increases. To be determined to what extent that's gonna be offset by higher corporate PPAs, corporate PPA prices. We know that the market has moved up in Europe. That's clear from what we had originally seen with our market sounding when we exercised our step-in rights. We just truthfully don't know to what extent it has moved up. You won't know until you actually get closer to actually negotiating the price and terms on a corporate offtake.
I'd say at this point, our view is that the project is continues to be viable, it will be confirmed once we see what the offtake looks like.
I guess just a more of a competitive landscape question. Ørsted had their call earlier this week and talked about trying to maybe target higher returns given some of the challenges they've seen in the industry. Shell came out with comments to saying that they wouldn't do just green investments. It had to be sufficiently high return hurdles. Do you think that will come through the industry? Are you seeing any signs of that? I guess ultimately, does it really impact in terms of what you're targeting and the approach you're taking to find your project in the offshore wind industry?
I mean, we've tried to focus on markets where we think, where A, where the entry cost is lower, and also where we can secure higher tariffs by being an early mover. For example, in Poland, with the Baltic Power project, we were among the first wave of projects to get CFDs through a non-competitive process, through an allocation. We've tried to be selective in terms of which markets we went into. In Germany, and to be determined on Nordseecluster, we've seen a robust market for corporate offtake emerging over the last few years. We took a view that there was gonna be a good opportunity to get a high tariff and industrial offtake for those two projects that we're developing with RWE.
I'd say, if we were in every market for offshore wind, I think there'd be a pretty broad range of returns that you'd be seeing, and 'cause some of those markets have gotten quite competitive. I think in some of the markets that we've seen, we've seen some challenges just recently with capital cost escalation, and certainly we've talked about Hai Long during our presentation and what's gone on in Taiwan with capital cost escalation. Overall, I think we've positioned ourselves in markets that generally offer better returns. To the extent we can achieve those returns, we do have a big pipeline, and we can pivot to other opportunities in that pipeline as well.
Okay. A couple of questions from Nelson Ng. First, on Spain, looking for some color on free cash flow trend, post 2023, then based on the debt, repayment profiles and what we know about the regulatory environment, what does it look like over the next couple of years?
Sure. In Spain, as, you know, we're all aware, when we purchased the portfolio in 2021, the reason why we purchased it was for, you know, the predictable, regulated cash flow stream from the assets and what it sort of added to our business, particularly with delivering, sort of near-term cash flow growth, but offering stability. With the unprecedented higher pool prices in Spain, it changed the shape of those cash flows.
What was supposed to be very stable cash flows turned out to be really upfronted cash flows in the sense of, you know, we've pre-traded a lot of cash sort of last year, expected this year, and those will sort of, you know, or are intended to taper off, 'cause as you know that you're supposed to end up with the regulated return over the life of the assets. From a corporate perspective, you know, obviously, you know, we have, you know, we've done well against our underwritten investment case. Last year, we were proactive in sort of seeing how the cash flow profile was changing, and we refinanced our debt in anticipation of that to match the debt to the new cash flow stream that we have.
I would say overall, since when we press-released the original Spain portfolio, I think we had about, looking at what seemed CAD 25 million roughly of free cash flow that we expected over that 5-year trajectory, and that, I would say at least has more than doubled in if you look at what we were getting in that initial timeframe, from our initial expectations. The cash flows have really upfronted in the Spain portfolio.
Okay. On the Oneida project, Nelson Ng's also looking, question on, do you already have a long-term PPA on the project?
Yeah. We have multiple options for a long-term PPA. When we're ready to, you know, say more about how that's shaping up, we certainly will. I would just add that with the options that we see in the market, we're expecting, roughly speaking, a mix of our cash flow to be about 2/3 contracted, 1/3 merchant.
Good morning. Naji Baydoun, Industrial Alliance. Partnerships has been a recurring theme over the past year and probably gonna become more relevant for you going forward. Talked a lot about partnerships on the equity side. I just wanted to get your thoughts on partnerships from a customer and supplier perspective, you know, first with Hai Long, the corporate PPA. Has that experience changed the way you think about partnerships with your clients and with your suppliers, especially with the challenges that you mentioned in the markets today? Thank you.
Supply chain and offtake? Both. On supply chain, we've always been close to our key suppliers. If anything, over the last year, we've gotten even closer and made sure that we manage those relationships tightly and that we work very closely with them to make sure that they understand what our pipeline of projects is going forward. In a tightening market, suppliers tend to focus on customers with both with the larger pipeline of opportunities going forward, but also those that they believe that they can transact with more easily, that will be a good partner, as to use your words.
That's kinda in terms of procurement, where our focus has been, and we've created a distinct procurement group within Northland that is setting up relationships with each one of these suppliers on an ongoing basis, even if we're not in an active procurement process on any given project. On offtake, definitely the intent is to now start building up those relationships with offtakers that have demand globally in different markets where we would be present and using that as a pull-on project development as well, as just a source of offtake once a project is already developed. Both of those relationships, but groupings of relationships are gonna be very important going forward for sure.
Thanks. Morning, everyone. David Quezada from Raymond James. Maybe a quick question on your hydrogen strategy in general. Over here. Hi.
There you are.
Yeah. Just a question about the, I know you have a grant to produce hydrogen. I believe it's at Nordsee Two. Just curious how, if that project goes really well, how does that play into your broader strategy, and what kind of opportunity does that unlock for you?
Yeah. That's a great question. We do have the grant there. It's to actually co-locate the electrolyzer with the offshore wind turbines, which looks like you know. We'll be evaluating that technology. It's fairly complicated, right, which is why we got the grant. You also have to figure out desalination of the water that you can flow through the electrolyzer, and the idea is that you would use then the produced hydrogen as a source of fuel for marine vessels in the area. I mean, obviously, if that goes well, that's something that we would continue to pursue. The point there is that we're looking at co-locating hydrogen at, you know, many of our facilities, especially the ones that would be coming off subsidy, which is for some of them is not too far out.
Basically, the kind of the takeaway from that is that the work that we're doing both on storage and on hydrogen, it really helps to address then the terminal value question that we have for our assets and what the. It broadens your set of options then that you have for those existing assets, which is, you know, always a good thing, right? Whereas in the past, we just had the option to, you know, recontract or something like that, now we're looking at what we could do with battery storage or what you could do producing hydrogen.
All right. We've got a question from Brett Castelli. Given the compression in offshore wind returns in recent years, are you seeing more disciplined bidding strategies from competitors?
We haven't yet had visibility in auctions. It's something that we're following closely to see if there's more discipline brought to bids. I mean, it's interesting. If you look, you dial back five years ago to the market environment of four or five years ago, you had an environment where interest rates were stable or moving down. You had capital costs generally moving down across most renewable asset classes. You had prices in auctions going down in some cases faster than the capital costs and the interest rates were moving downwards as well. You had growth going on in terms of targets and procurements globally.
Nothing like what we're starting to see now. You fast-forward to today, different market environment in so far as huge growth targets now for renewables, both in terms of decarbonization objectives, but also in terms of energy security in Europe, and like I said, to a certain extent in Northeast Asia. You look at the rest of it, you've got interest rates obviously in the last year moving up. Forward curve isn't moving up as much as obviously the Fed rate or the Bank of Canada rate. The interest rates are moving up. Capital costs are going up materially in the last year.
There's more and more opportunity than there would've been five years ago or four years ago for growth and more demand, I think, for the types of projects that we develop. It really does require a different approach to how you go about growing and how you go about securing projects, securing offtake. Our expectation is that there will be more discipline in terms of competitive processes for offtake. We certainly are always, in our view, disciplined in terms of how we participate in those auctions. We're happy to lose if the winner is bidding at unrealizable prices, but we'll have to see how things develop.
Hi, Nic Boychuk from Cormark Securities. Just with the renewed focus on the North American onshore renewable portfolio, I'm curious how much that decision was the result of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and Canada's potential response, and how much NPI is potentially gonna benefit from those, and what it might mean for future capital allocation decisions?
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is obviously targeted to helping the sector in the U.S., right? Clearly. The one global benefit of it, I think, is on supply chain, and particularly in solar, for example, that it will send a signal, I think, to solar and module manufacturers that they should probably set up fabrication in the U.S. We've heard of a couple of moves in that respect, given just what the growth trajectory is gonna look like in the U.S. That's good for projects anywhere, and particularly good for projects in Canada.
What the Canadian government signaled in the fall with their intent to come up with a similar scheme, Wendy talked about some of the comments made yesterday, that helps from a pricing standpoint, obviously keep Canada on an equal footing or at least close to an equal footing so that we still remain an attractive market for suppliers of modules and panels in terms of solar. It also creates more liquidity. We have to see what these incentives actually look like. It creates more liquidity in the corporate offtake market 'cause it pulls more buyers in 'cause the price that you can sell at should come down, obviously.
Okay. Question from Brent Stadler. Manufacturers of next-gen offshore wind turbines are discussing 60% capacity factors. Can you talk about where you see capacity factors shaking out on the 14-15 MW turbines being utilized at Hai Long Baltic and potentially the Nordsee cluster?
I think we're generally looking at capacity factors. I haven't got the exact numbers, but capacity factors in the 45%-50% range on those projects.
Thank you. Hi, Benjamin Pham, BMO Capital Markets. Maybe a couple questions on Hai Long, if I may. On the financial close, can you share more context on what is driving the delay? Is it repricing of the debt expectations? What's driving the delay? Is there a point where financial close gets pushed out at some point? Like, what causes friction to your timing and in service of Hai Long?
In terms of schedule, we have consciously made a decision to keep with the schedule for the project. Through limited notice to proceed with suppliers, make sure that they begin the fabrication work that needs to be done this year so that the project can move to in-water construction next year, right. That we keep the schedule, that we don't add any additional risk to the project in terms of its in-service deadline under its offtake agreement or do anything that would reduce the buffers that we have already built into what we think is a quite a conservative construction schedule. We wanna maintain that. We don't wanna add risk in terms of project execution. That's one thing that we've done. In terms of the financing, I mean, there's two elements that have gone on.
One, which was really focused around last August, September, which was well-publicized, was the rise in tensions between China and Taiwan and the U.S., really anchored around the Nancy Pelosi visit to Taipei. We've seen those tensions and a lot of that noise recede in the last few months, but it certainly did slow down the pace of the financing, which we'd really just launched in August. It kinda slowed down the launch of that financing as all the participants wanted to kinda gauge where that was gonna settle out, which it has now started to, I think settle out to something similar to what the situation had been prior to all that spike in tensions. Second factor is that, as well-publicized, there's another offshore wind project.
There's several offshore wind projects in Taiwan that have moved through construction and into operations. There's one project that is currently in construction that is having some serious delays, and there's some overlap in terms of lenders between our project, financing and that project. It's taking a bit more time for us to answer the questions from those lenders, how is your project different from this other project? As I said, one thing that we've done with our project is have a very conservative construction schedule. The second thing is the other project was a 2020 or 2021 in service, so it was on a fast track to get that project into construction. Sometimes, you move too fast, that creates delays.
Our project was a 2025, 2026 interconnection. We had a lot more time to properly do geotech, to do the FEED, and to get the right team together to execute. Those are the questions that we're answering from the lender, so it takes a bit more time.
Okay. That's, that's very useful, Mike. Under Gentari sell down, how would you characterize that in terms of your expectations? It looks like it's in a range of 200- 400 b asis points, was it exceeding your expectations in terms of that sale, sell-down?
We were looking for two things in that sell-down process. It was the first one that we've gone through. We were looking for the right partner, so somebody who could actually add some value to the project, and also a partner that could do more in Taiwan if we choose to do more in Taiwan and wanted to work with us. As I said, we're looking at potentially a broader partnership for future offshore wind with Gentari there. That's number one, was a partner that we can work with, that there's a good cultural fit and that can add value. The second thing was certainly on economics and making sure that they, in our view, paid...
Contributed and paid up the right value for the project given where market conditions were at the time and where the project is at too. On both those criteria, it was a competitive process run by an advisor. We were satisfied that we ended up with the right and the best partner.
If I may squeeze one on Alberta. I mean, the carbon tax has been around for some time in terms of it's increasing and whatnot, and the net dynamics have maybe shifted a little bit this year. Why now in Alberta is... That's, I guess, that's part A of the question. Part B is, would you have still done Greengate if you didn't see the tax credits in the budget?
We've been looking at Alberta for a number of years. We've done some early-stage solar development ourselves. We've got a wind project that we're developing that's at a mid stage in Alberta. It's a market that we know fairly well. The Greengate development team, a number of us have known for years. They're probably among the best developers, if not in Alberta, but probably in Canada. The attraction was both, as you said, the very liquid corporate offtake market in Alberta, which we think will continue to grow for the reasons that you alluded to. Certainly, what's going on with the tax credits, and we'll see what they are.
I think that made the prospect more attractive, but it wasn't the decision, to move forward or to start, looking at Alberta. We've been looking at it for a while.
All right. We'll go back to the webcast. Question from Brent Stadler again. Can you talk about how Hai Long- type projects could end up benefiting the offshore wind industry going forward? Will inflation escalators and PPAs become standardized as developers demand bigger risk premiums?
Well, I think you're gonna see... I mean, there was a question earlier on this. I would expect that you're gonna start seeing energy prices, offtake prices go up on PPAs, on corporate offtake. Certainly, grid merchant prices have gone up significantly in most markets over the last year. I would expect certainly there'll be a greater consciousness in the negotiation of offtakes and the creation of sovereign auction processes around being more aware of inflation moving forward, for sure.
Okay. We'll continue on. Question from Alexander Cruz. I'd like more color on your strategy in Colombia. As you are an integrated player, is it possible to farm down other assets and focus only on renewables?
The strategy in Colombia was initially to acquire a utility. That investment has, again, similar to the Spanish investment, has outperformed its original underwritten thesis. It's performed extremely well. It's a great management team. The thesis was in part to use that as a platform to be able to source renewable power projects as we saw that market was just about to get going in Colombia. We've completed our first solar project last year, brought it into commercial operations. We've got an offtake on another solar project this year. We're looking at other renewable power, wind, and solar opportunities at an early stage with different developers in that country.
That's the thesis, is having a platform in Colombia, so that we can have the market knowledge to be able to source good projects and understand the regulatory framework there too.
Okay. A follow-up question on that. Sorry, what are the possible impacts of the recent changes in the Colombian regulatory framework on the regulated business on EBSA?
I mean, we're still see a lot of opportunity with EBSA. EBSA had a lot of in its tariff structure. It has good inflation protection, which has certainly served that investment well over the last year. We don't see any of the recent changes having a significant impact on EBSA.
Okay. Question from Rajat Sarup. If you can be more selective in projects geography versus, say, Ørsted, are your returns better than what they guided to, i.e., the 100 to 300 basis points over WACC?
I mean, we don't necessarily give a spread over WACC like Ørsted does. I think there's two things, is we don't need to have as much growth as a larger company would. We can be selective, as I said, in the markets that we enter into. Truthfully, we're quite sensitive to entry costs, we try and screen for that as initially as well as where we think the prospective returns are gonna be. Secondly, as I said in my presentation, we don't have to build everything that we're developing. We can. A big pipeline allows us to be selective in what we go after.
The other thing about Ørsted is that they balance sheet finance, which is why WACC-
Right
... is relevant for them. For us, we use the project finance non-recourse model, so it's the return over equity for us. It's not quite apples to apples, but we are still targeting, you know, solid returns on equity from our offshore wind projects, and we're seeing greater interest in our sell downs. You know, as you noted, we've been talking about it for a couple years and finally, you know, getting towards demonstrating the value in our financials.
Okay. question from Ron Nestico: Can you comment on the routing of underwater cables and the challenges you may be faced with in the near future?
We've, we do inspections of all of our underwater cables at our offshore wind facilities to keep a close eye on any potential degradation, particularly where the cable joins up with the turbine, where I think some other projects have had issues in the past. It's something where we use underwater drones to inspect those on a regular basis. It's certainly in terms of inter-array cables, it's a vulnerability that we're well aware of, so we keep close track of it. In terms of the export cable, that's where the greatest vulnerability is, and similarly, we keep track on any degradation that we see going on and make sure that we remedy it quickly.
Question from Felix Brüning again: What is your perspective on latest trend of negative bidding in European offshore tenders, and specifically Germany and the Netherlands?
I mean, we don't think it's a positive development. I think it ends up simply passing on those costs to industry or whoever the offtaker is for those projects, whoever ends up entering into a corporate PPA to buy the electrons from those projects, which then only serves to inflate energy prices further. You may get through a negative price or a bid price on an auction or a lease by paying huge sums for a lease. The government treasury may get an influx of cash, but then it ends up working its way through to higher energy prices for industry, which I don't think makes sense.
Question from Nelson Ng again: what are some of the reasons you're not looking to sell a stake in Baltic Power?
We're not, I mean, it's a very attractive project in our view. It's a 25-year index CFD in a market that we see further growth in as well. I mean, As I said earlier, I mean, that pie chart that Pauline walked through, different elements can move around depending on different market conditions at any given time. At this point, we look at that project and we think it's a very attractive project and we're happy with our 49% stake in it.
Just a couple more here. Justin Strong: Can you provide some more detail on Northland's expected role for projects coming from European partnerships?
What our role will be with partnerships?
Yep. Yes.
Yeah. I mean, we can talk again on Baltic Power, maybe use that as an example. PKN ORLEN, oil and gas company in Poland, very large company in Poland, had secured a lease, had started doing some of the early stage permitting on that project. They were looking for a partner who could come in and bring the technical expertise needed to figure out how to design the project, do the FEED, and also oversee the financing and the construction of that project. And a partner who they thought that they could collaborate well with, which we think is kind of our, a differentiator for us, maybe versus some of our competitors when in partnering. That's basically what they were looking for.
They visited our team in Hamburg, which is where most of our offshore wind talent is, spent time with our technical and project development team there. I think from that helped them make the decision to select us over others.
Okay. Duncan McDonald asks, approximately how much of your debt is variable rate exposure, and how much of this is covered by swaps?
We have zero variable rate exposure today or near zero. Almost all of our debt is fully hedged. That will continue to be the strategy and the risk management approach that we take going forward. Okay.
Well, thank you very much, everybody, for coming out on, as I said, for the third time, I'll say, for such a cold morning. It's great seeing everybody again and being able to be in the same room. We're gonna hang around a bit after, so hope we can have some one-on-one conversations. I don't know if there, are there sandwiches coming, Waseem? There you go. There's some food too. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you for everyone who joined us online as well.
Yes.
Thank you.